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The hosts welcome attendees, share the usual opening chat, and introduce the session topic and structure. Siobhan outlines that the webinar will focus on social work assessment, theory, and lived experience.
excellent right welcome everybody to webinar 11.um if you are just joining us for the first time welcome if you have gone to every single webinar then you've done better than i have so welcome um in usual fashion we will talk about what we've hadfor our tea are if you're very very busy multitasking and what would you like for your tea it might not be the same as what you're gonna get for your tea but what you've had for your tea whatyou would like for your tea or what you're going to have for your tea and so let's see can people put things in the chat can they talk to us let's have a look what are people saying pizza
yep sorry sorry about that but yeah if you have pizza you're banned
excellent and kind of in the tradition that we've created over the short number of weeks we've been doing the webinars tell us where you're from um chicken tikka from bradford i'm assuming that's what you've had for your teanot your name okay thanks kelly i love that see you again next wednesday talk about food i love that um aspect there kelly so if everybody switches off their microphone except annie and myself that would be great uhthe number in the session are it's still going up all of the time but we will make a start because we have a lot to get through tonight so i know lots of you are regulars regular attenders ofthe social work student connect webinars but there's perhaps some people who are here for the first time so i'll just give a very quick introduction uh to me my name's siobhan mclean i'm a social worker i've been a
social worker for 30 years now i do a lot of work now working with students and newly qualified workers and i'm particularly interested in theory and reflection in social work so we've been doing these webinars this is nowour 11th week we started them fairly early in lockdown to try and support students and new workers and all social workers really to keep connected with each other and to keep their practice connected with theory so tonight's sessionis looking at social work assessment we're going to be thinking about some theory some practice but mostly experience because we have a very special guest with us who is going to be talking uh about experience and theory andpractice so we've got all three of those coming up tonight so uh very much based around threes tonight because we've got theory practice and experience there's three key aspects of assessment for the webinar tonight and the webinar will
come in three parts so we're going to start off with annie's introduction to herself and then we're going to have a bit of a reminder of the theories and models of assessment in social work for some of youthat will be very much a refresher for others it might be some aspects of it that are new to you and then we're going to uh conclude the session tonight with some do's and don'ts or maybe an alternativephrase of that is annie's advice on assessment so um i think the first thing and the most important thing as our numbers are continuing to uh go up we've now got 338 people with us and i'm going to
Annie introduces herself and explains her background in foster care, care leaving, motherhood, and child protection involvement. She describes how these experiences led her to write, train social workers, and advocate for parents and families.
just ask um annie if she would introduce herself to everybody tonight hi everyone so thank you very much for having me siobhan um it's a real pleasure to uh to be here it's not at all scary um thatthere's this vast numbers of people um although it's really interesting to find out what everyone's had for their tea um if you have had pizza consider us enemies um because i have not had my tea yet um buti am now very hungry so thank you for that um so good evening to you all i hope you're all well and thank you all for joining us um it's really lovely to be here and uh so myname is annie and i am the writer and founder of surviving safe garden which is a parent's guide to the child protection process and um the reason that i wrote um survival safeguard and i started to write safeguarding
back in 2014 was that i am also a mum who has been through many many years of intervention by the local authority and into my family life and some of it wanted and some of it not wanted andunwelcome and it really started from my own childhood um where i was in the foster care system myself and then left uh this system to become a care leaver but was was very much um sort of cast outand left in in the cold really um as a care leaver didn't have a great experience um in terms of entering the adult world became a mum at 16 and didn't have very much support uh didn't have verymuch help and struggled and used the um the local authority as uh as helpful help and support and they were very helpful and they were very very supportive of me um and helped me uh at times that i
that i really did struggle with my children with my mental health um and with the general sort of day-to-day um parenting um so so in many respects the local authority were very very helpful to me and and thatunfortunately changed um around about 2012 although slightly before then um essentially i wasn't really getting any better um and my issues and some of my choices left a lot to be desired quite frankly and i did fail mychildren and i'm not ashamed to i am ashamed of failing my children but i'm not ashamed to admit that because i think it's very important to be very honest um and i'm not here to be anything other thanthat so um the local authority uh then changed their approach to me and care precedence were issued after i suffered a pretty severe breakdown um in mid-2012 and during that time my life was very chaotic and i was
still making some really poor choices and i fell pregnant again i was the subject of many many assessments which is one of the reasons i'm here to talk to you tonight and one of those was a pre-birth assessmentin respect to mumbling baby that assessment was negative my baby went on to be removed at birth um he was six days old when he was taken from me with an ultimate plan of adoption and it was backat a time when it was very difficult to have a newborn return to your care um things have slightly changed because of certain case laws and because the system has humanized more than it more than it was sortof eight years ago um i've certainly seen a massive difference in the six five six years that i've been working um with social workers and with families i worked extremely hard i decided to change my life um and
really look inward and to see what actually i could do to make my situation different in my family situation better and i needed to make a lot of reparations in terms of my children i needed to put alot of work in um to look after my children in a better way and after 258 days of very hard work very hard slog my baby was returned to me um and he's been with me ever since thatwas seven years ago we haven't had a social worker for six years um and i have worked very hard to maintain my mental health um i began writing as a way of trying to provide parents and families withanother voice um what i had noted during my proceedings was that there were was an inordinate amount of negativity towards social workers and um the child protection system in general and there was not a huge amount of um
insight um and and uh allowances that actually were human and we do mess up but what we often need is support and help um there wasn't that narrative so my viewpoint was that actually what i needed to dowas try to empower parents with the knowledge to help them navigate the system but then also go on further to help them think about the changes that they could make in their lives and to work with the localauthority to maintain and sustain those changes for the good of themselves and of course their children so that's why i launched surviving safeguarding um and have now trained tens of thousands of social workers across the uk and internationallyum two years ago i became a member of the family justice council i'm the parent and relatives representative so i have a direct link to the judiciary and i am on several working groups there i work with domestic
abuse um and several other um parties as well and i'm really trying to change things from the inside um and and have never forgot parents along the way have worked with parents for many many years for free umtrying to help people um to think about what they could do differently and how to get parents or families and social workers to them work together so that's a very long-winded intro but essentially in a nutshell that is
Siobhan revisits the idea of assessment as a core social work skill and discusses how theory often frames assessment as part of a helping cycle. She and Annie reflect on whether assessment should be seen as the start of a process or as an intervention in its own right.
me thanks for sharing that annie um it wasn't long-winded it was fascinating and you can even though uh you know we're all sort of sitting in our bedrooms and our lounges and things you can still feel that youcan hear a pin drop in the room almost so thank you very much for sharing that and i know that you have so much to share with us tonight and that everybody really appreciates your work both with socialworkers and with parents and i think that's that's key so i know that you're going to bring a lot of that with with us tonight so we're going to start off with a bit of theory really i supposea reminder of the theory and in many ways assessment is really the bread and butter of social work practice but even though it's the bread and butter it's well worth revisiting some of those things so even if you've
been a social worker for many years it's worth revisiting some aspects of the theory around uh social work assessment so this is a quote now from uh well almost 20 years old isn't it but i think it's stillvery relevant as a quote so it comes from the social care institute of excellence and they say although assessment has been recognized as a core skill in social work and it should underpin all social work interventions there's nosingular theory or understanding as to what the purpose of assessment is and what the process should entail so i think there's still this scattering really of theory around social work there's nothing that's clear and although tonight we're goingto be talking a lot about theory in relation to children and their families actually all of the theory is very generic theory and there's a great deal of learning that you can take from that so thinking about theory
and assessment really all of the theory and the traditional views of assessment if you like usually focus on process issues either seeing assessment as part of the social work process or a consideration of the process of assessment sopretty much all of the theory fits into one of those two areas really so it'll either look at assessment as part of a process or it will think of process of assessment and that whole element to me andthe illustration i suppose on this slide is to me it always feels a bit scientific when we talk about that process issues it always feels a bit like well where are the people here you know let's let notlose sight of people within a process and sometimes i think people get themselves so tied up in the process and i hear social workers talk about well i've done that bit i've done that but it's almost like just
form filling starts to lead the assessment so if we just look at the theory i suppose in those two parts to start off with assessment often seen as part of the social work process then if you go uhyou know quite a long way back really taylor and davine talk about this but you can trace it back to earlier as well then assessment is generally seen as a key part of the social work assessment process sotaylor and devine refer to it as the basic helping cycle but you know i've been qualified for 30 years and i remember i did a four-year course i remember 34 years ago being taught this stuff that assessment isthe first thing that we do with people but the also assessment is constant and ongoing an assessment should carry on through the whole of your work with people but assessment is often seen as the beginning of a process
so that we should do assessment then reach some sort of recommendation then we plan around that we we intervene in a situation and then we review what impact that intervention has had and that might lead us into areassessment of the situation and that's very um you know that goes back to 1993 but if you continue to look it's all the same kind of stuff that you see so aspire assert it makes it sound really umyou know i think the use of those sort of mnemonics make it sound like this is something really complex but actually all this is very similar around looking at assessment as being the beginning of a social work processoh sorry do you think that that's accurate do you think that the assessment part is actually the start do you think there's something that comes before that well i suppose what i think comes before that is what should
come before that is build a relationship but that's not often what comes before that often what comes first is in many ways social workers gathering information before they even make contact with an individual so i think that gatheringof information aspects starts first i suppose though from my perspective i think the way we see assessment as the start of a process and maybe we are assessing from the minute we receive a referral on it you knowif i as a social worker i'm sitting at a desk i receive a phone call which is a referral or something lands in my inbox which is a referral immediately i'm starting to assess the situation as i'm readingit what do i think is happening here so i suppose assessment is always there at the beginning but i don't think it should be seen as the start of a process because sometimes an assessment is enough in itself
and for me i think a good assessment is actually an intervention in its own right if you like because sometimes when you go through an assessment if you can enable people to reflect for themselves and learn what needsto be changed for themselves then we don't need to do the planning and the intervention and the review assessment can stand alone and but only if it's a good assessment but i think the problem with it being seenas part of a process is people go out looking for the assessment they're almost asking themselves what do i need to do rather than let's just sit with this assessment and see what comes out of it that becausethey see it as the beginning of this process it's almost like what do i do next what to do next so i think that's one of the problems with this seeing assessment as the beginning of a process and
maybe just helping us more to think about the skills that social workers have in assessment should be that this assessment could be a service in its own right you know families can really benefit from a really good assessmenti mean i'm just drawing back to thinking about my own experiences because i suppose we're drawing on experiences here but they're very different my experiences after i had my stroke which i know you know all about annie butthen and the best assessment that i had didn't lead to anything but it enabled me to relearn i had a social care assessment that was all about what support do we need to give you and it was veryprocess driven and it felt like i was just being processed through something i had a really good ot assessment that really enabled me to learn about my own circumstance and what i could change and what i could do
and that was a great assessment and to me that was a better service than anything else i got so i think an assessment can be a service in its own right i suppose but that's a bit about assessment
The discussion turns to a five-stage model of assessment, including preparation, data collection, weighing up, analysis, and utilization. Annie critiques the language of data and the sense that assessments can feel done to people rather than with them.
at the beginning of a process then if we look at the process of assessment now i know both of us only have a lot to say about this particular slide but um this is milner and oba oberon whichis a very popular um social work assessment textbook for students and uh for quite a long time i mean this is taken from a later edition so 2009 but they started writing about this much earlier and they talkabout assessment as having five stages the first stage being preparation so think about you know they're saying that a social worker should think about who do they need to see why are they doing the assessment what information theyneed to gather so it's a kind of plan for the assessment what do i need to be doing in lots of ways those of you who've attended all the webinars might recognize that as that's reflection for action the
reflection you do before a piece of work then they talk about data collection so collect the information and that's where you get gather the information that you need a good assessment plan helps you to think about and gatherand structure that collection of information then they say stage three is weighing up the data so they say at this point the social worker weighs up the information to reach an answer to the essential question is there aproblem and is it serious so at this point we're weighing up the information that we've gathered then they say analyze the data so here they're saying the information is interpreted so that the social worker can gain a fullerunderstanding and develop ideas for intervention and then the fifth stage they say is utilizing the data and that's when we finalize judgments that we make and we maybe use the information to evidence the judgments and the recommendations for
intervening so that's the process of assessment that a lot of um social work training includes that kind of process of assessment so what are your thoughts about that annie i mean we've had a conversation haven't we about thisbut i don't know if you wanted to say anything at this point um i hate the word data i really hate the word um it's um it's it's difficult for me to think about my life as being umfull of data to be um to be extracted from me in order to be put in a document form um and then uh used to inform a decision um which is going to be made about me there seemsto be a lot of doing without me um and and not a great deal in this model about working with me and at least it's saving grace is that it has the preparation um but that again doesn't talk
about what what happens when you come into my home um what's the first question you ask me when you sit down on my sofa um that's the sort of thing that matters to me um not what data youare going to extract and stick in a report that whilst that matters in terms of is it accurate um and does it reflect what i perceive to be the problems um or i perceive to be some issues orsome things that i can work on or maybe some strengths um that doesn't again seem to be a massive amount about strength in this um and we all have strengths um even if we're really struggling we still havestrengths so um so i am not a huge fan um i can understand it i think in the chat somebody had said it's very medicalized um i would agree um but the language that's used is very in others
people um and it others the families and and the the adults the children that that you work with um and so this is this is very far from what i would see as being it would no doubt bea very efficient um uh assessment but i don't think it would leave me feeling like i had been helped or that i understood what to do next um i would struggle with this one i think yeah yeah yeahi agree it's that word data isn't it really sort of drag and it does feel as though this is something that is being done to somebody rather than being done with somebody and interesting there the way you usethat word where you said i don't feel i would have been helped with this if we go back to the process of assessment and where that started it's called the helping cycle that's where it's so this is supposed
to be about helping and supporting people not going in and doing something to somebody and i think it can feel a bit like that and i i was thinking you know when i was preparing for this i wasthinking i suppose it was at the end of last week and it made me think about this uh tweet that whole thought about just the word data made me think about this that was a tweet that i sawages ago but it really captured me at the time so in 2018 michael rosen who's a children's author said this first they said they needed data about the children to find out what they're learning then they said theyneeded data about the children to make sure their learning then the children only learnt what could be turned into data and then the children became the data and i was thinking last week and then the data was used
to fail disadvantaged children and further advantage children from private schools that whole thing about data is it's impersonalized i think as annie has said it others people we're no longer talking about us we're talking about well we're nolonger talking about we we're talking about us and them and that's the quote of yours that i love the most on him i'm sure you'll share that later but that whole aspect of data terrifies me really and thedate you know you can see the mix-up that's occurred with data and just data just simply becoming there's a lack of people here so let's think about maybe information rather than data so if we're thinking about process issuesthen and when you and i have chatted um annie we've said well actually our perspective on the process of assessment is maybe three things so firstly build the relationship then gather the information and that information should also include
aspects of strengths as you said and then make a decision or a recommendation that you take forward for somebody else to make the decision the decision isn't always a key part of the assessment sometimes the assessment is simplyinforming the decision-making process so for us it's those three things that process of assessment and the most important thing is the making of the relationship so a little bit more about theory but then i know really what everybody
Siobhan outlines three classic assessment models: questioning, procedural, and exchange. She explains how each shapes the worker-family interaction and argues that real assessments often need elements of all three.
wants to hear about is annie's advice so i'm going to just quickly whiz through this but um i suppose coming from that three leading us into another three is models of assessment and now these go right back tothey're based on research in 1993 smail ital identified what they did was they'd um observed lots of social workers but this was in adult services after the implementation of the nhs and community care act so we have toremember where it came from and they identified three different models of assessment they said there was a questioning model a procedural model and an exchange model of assessment that they noted in the social workers that they observed andif we just look at that and what each of those models means then in terms of the questioning model this is one where the worker so the social worker perhaps holds the expertise and they follow a form of
questions where they are supposed to listen to and just kind of respond and process the answers but i think it from the other side probably just feels like you're having questions fired at you and i know annie lateryou'll tell us about your experiences of that but from from the perspective of reading the literature if you like around this model really it it reflects the agenda of the worker it does what the worker wants it todo and i've noticed as a practice educator working with students and new workers that sometimes the way people prepare for assessments is to develop themselves a list of questions here's the questions i want to ask and then itcan feel very just question focused one after another being fired at you the second model they identified they called the procedural model and within this model the worker is gathering information to make a judgment but it's all focused
on whether the person fits criteria really and it's and in in the procedural model it feels quite tick boxy and it's likely that lots of checklists and lots of kind of um i suppose tools of assessment get usedand in a way that reflects the agenda of the organization and then the third model that they identified was the exchange model now the emphasis in this model is on exchanging information so i think it feels much morelike it's being done with the person the worker follows what a person is saying rather than trying to interpret what they think is being meant they follow and track what the person is saying and they go with thatand the workers should help the person to identify their strengths their internal resources and their potential and that should reflect the agenda of the person who is being assessed and when you read the literature it generally sort of
indicates that we should move towards the exchange model talking to a student in supervision last week they said when they'd read around it they felt like that was given like the gold star approach you know the exchange modelis what we should aim for and i do hear lots of people saying students start off with a questioning model and should work towards an exchange model but actually in my view we probably need a bit of allof this in every assessment because actually we need to address everybody's agenda so there may be a need to use some checklists and criteria there may be a need to utilize some clear questioning especially when we're looking ataspects of risk but then there's also a need for that exchange so i'm whizzing through these because i really want to come to annie's experiences so i know she's probably going to refer back to these aren't you annie
The webinar moves to triangulation as a method, using observation, feedback, and product evidence to strengthen assessment. Siobhan and Annie also critique assessment frameworks, the toxic trio, and the overuse of tools and checklists.
when talking about experiences but just very quickly just wanted to uh revisit what we've done in lots of the webinars about looking at the difference between a theory a model a method and an approach and what we've doneis we've looked at models of assessment so those three models of assessment but then what about methods and what should we do in terms of methods and i just wanted to pull out really one method which is triangulationso in any assessment what we should be drawing on is triangulation of evidence there's really three sources of evidence in any assessment that we're doing and maybe rather than think about this in terms of assessing a family ora child or an adult i'm going to just think about this in terms of assessing a student social worker because lots of you out there have been a student or are a student so you've all been assessed your
practice was assessed by another social worker and what they were doing was i as a practice educator i've done a direct observation of a student today now it was a strange one because it was virtual but i'm observingwhat does that student do so i'm drawing on observation and all of you will have put a portfolio together with some observation evidence in there's also feedback evidence where we get feedback from others about that student's practice andthen there's product evidence so we look at the product of their work but that's just the same when we're assessing a family or an adult we're looking at what do we see around us in the environment we're lookingat gathering feedback from the person the family but other professionals as well and we're also looking at products like chronologies maybe or other methods tools that we've used when we have all three sources of evidence it gives us
a stronger clarity of assessment if we rely purely on one area it it limits the assessment more this is a bit of a problem i think with virtual assessments at the moment because we're not always able to seewhat we don't always go into people's homes and those things can have an impact but triangulation is really important so i wanted to just sort of bring it up and refer to it but i have noticed when italk to people about triangulation and assessment sometimes i think i'm talking about this which is the assessment framework for children's in england but that's not to be confused with what i've just talked about triangulation of evidence this islooking at three different aspects looking at a child's developmental needs parenting capacity and family and environmental factors it certainly should not be confused with this one another triangle that's used in assessment the toxic trio this one's referred to
i mean imagine the language of this which is largely blaming of mothers as well i don't know what your thoughts are about the language around this one it's interesting because i've been sort of watching watching you and watchingthe chat and already we've had a few people say the dehumanizing nature of language um sometimes within social work um you know i am i have not been um involved in substance misuse but essentially the other two areme um and behind that triangle and that vile um terminology of toxic trio is me um is a human um as a person and i just think we need to be so careful of labels like the toxic triowhich instantly because of the use of the word toxic um blame shame judgment um and these things really do matter and we do hear them um families parents and adults using services we do hear these terms used we
don't always know what they mean but toxic is never a good word um so you start to pretend is that it's probably a criticism or a judgment um so be really really aware of using terms like the toxictrio um when you're talking about people uh instead it could be um this this father has mental health issues and this father is a victim of domestic abuse this mother is a uh uses misuses substances um and hasmental ill health as well you don't need to label us as having toxic trio i hate that it's one of the very few phrases that i really can't stand it's it's a heart i mean it's just a horribleword isn't it and it's it's also you know been very criticized as largely blaming of mothers as well so there's also that element of you know if you want to try and think about feminist practice and so on
so triangles as you can see are really popular in social work theories around assessment you know think about cartman's drama triangle think about maslow's hierarchy of needs and i think it's very easy and it's sort of um maybeappealing to social workers and to theorists to think about a triangle but we've got to take a critical stance and look at what's missing you know the child welfare inequalities network is particularly critical of that concept of thetoxic trio because it says well those three you know are undoubtedly significant factors but the key thing that's missing from there is the impact of poverty and insecurity and the links between poverty and those three factors are nottaken into account so you know people say the toxic trio comes from research but actually it misses out all of the research about poverty because that isn't you know doesn't fit with the triangle so always think about take
out critical stance and particularly i would suggest we need to take a critical stance around tools and checklists so in fairly recent research undertaken around child sexual exploitation then um brown hotel found across england and wales there werebetween nine and 28 different assessment tools that were being used and checklists that were being used simply in relation to child sexual exploitation so up to 28 different assessment tools imagine being someone and having those 28 tools usedon you you know 28 different tools and the way they're used is really varied you know the quotes there in particular we found the risk indicators being used varied considerably across the large number of tools so examining 10tools they identified 110 different indicators how many tick boxes is that how much are we dehumanizing and not listening to people's individual experiences and it's really important as that quotation concludes there that as social workers we need to
find out what was this tool created for and use it for what it was created for rather than thinking oh this is a nice it's almost like we get a bit tick box happy with all of these forms
Annie describes how virtual assessments can widen power imbalances, especially through digital poverty and lack of privacy. She and Siobhan discuss how remote working affects information gathering, professional communication, and the delivery of recommendations.
and all let's tick a few more and let's tick a bit more it becomes incredibly depersonalized so finally i suppose one thing we thought is important just to mention is this move at the moment towards virtual assessment isn'tit because everything is being done virtually you know we're doing all of this virtually none of us are together we're all doing it from our respective front rooms and things in my perspective what we need to do forvirtual assessment is use the what why and how framework you know i've said before in previous webinars what we do as social workers and why we do it is remaining the same during this pandemic practice how we're doingit is changing rapidly and i think in just the same way what information we need to gather and why we need to gather it remains the same but how we gather the information is changing and annie i know
you've been talking to some parents who are experiencing virtual assessments how does it feel to be on the other side of the virtual box tick box if you like it's yeah it's so it's it's quite frustrating for manyof the parents that um that i've worked with and and i talked to regularly um what they are experiencing is um often a widening of um of the power dynamic um and and the mismatch of power between umthe the social workers that are assessing you and and your own see your own self and your family um and the have and have nots so um one of the things that's been quite difficult for families has beendigital poverty and and the restrictions that that puts on you so i am very lucky in that um in my job i need to use a laptop so therefore i have a laptop in front of me which has
a built-in camera i have an office chair so i can sit and uncomfortable and i can conduct a conversation reasonably well i can use my hands i'm quite comfortable that's not the case when you are attempting to conductan assessment whilst on your phone um perhaps with a camera perhaps sometimes with our parents um they don't have phones with cameras um or they don't have enough data to be able to use those those phones um soit's having to be done over the phone um but even if it is done by video call imagine having to stand with your phone for an hour um while your social worker sits and chats to you in ain a relatively comfortable environment that i am enjoying at the moment that's really really difficult and it's and it's um it brings highlights more the difference between um those who are being assessed and those who are assassin so
that's been one of the issues the other issue has been the more obvious one and and that's around um how can you be sure who is in the room um and how can you get an assessment accurate umif you can do such a thing but how how can you move towards um more of a natural assessment when you don't know you haven't got a clue who's behind my camera right now there's nobody but you onlyknow that because i've told you so how do we create an environment where um if a social worker needs to talk to a family member and that family member could be quite vulnerable it could be it could bea mum could be a dad could be a young person how do we know that there's not somebody the other side of that screen influencing what's been said now the fact is we don't but there are things that
we can do differently um and what we need to try and create is an environment where that family member feels at their least vulnerable that's really quite difficult and and takes some skill but that's one of the thingsthat's coming out with parents they're not necessarily saying well um you know i am a victim of domestic abuse and instead of being able to talk freely my partner stood behind the screen and i was not able tospeak i'm not getting reports as as explicit as that what i'm getting is it's really difficult for me to have a conversation with a social worker in private right now so that read into that what you will butthat is parents family members telling me that they can't necessarily be themselves the other thing to really be aware of as social workers is the huge amount of sensory information that you're missing by conducting a virtual assessment so
whilst um it's absolutely right that in the same way you need the same information you have got a gap um in that information and you need to be aware of that so how else could you get that informationwhat do you need to change your questions because it's it's very difficult for us as parents before we came on um the uh people on the screen had said um you know everything looks great and i said okayhang on i'm gonna turn my camera around and i showed this is just toys it's just toys um it's just chaos but that's what that's what people don't see so it's what what are you missing and how doyou make how do how could i now feel comfortable enough in front of all of you to turn my camera around and show you what i'm saying um and show you the truth as it were um about the
state of my living room how do i do that how do i feel safe enough to do that so these are all the holes that need to be filled and they need you need to be mindful of theseso that's what i would probably say about virtual assessment in a nutshell absolutely and i think if we go back to where we started with the theory because we're kind of ending the theory now and going into theexperience bit but if we go back to where we started that assessment to gather information and then planning and then intervention and so on i'm hearing so many stories about um local uh areas where all of the professionalsare in on a video type call using some sort of system like teams or something like that but parents are just on a telephone you know being sort of on speakerphone added in and that's so again so different
in terms of that power dynamic and how everybody can access it and you can access in different ways so professionals get to see one another and yet the the family are just listening in and it's very i thinkit's very stark at the moment that digital publicity that's really coming the difference in terms of when you come to deliver a decision or a recommendation um what has been reported to me by parents is well the socialworker ran around everybody and i said okay so when did they get to you oh i was last okay so they'd run around to get everybody's recommendation and they let you know the recommendation how fair did that feelyou know how would you have felt if you were sat in a room and the social worker just went out the room and and checked how would you feel if would it feel different if it if that was
a physical thing rather than the social worker just kind of ringing around because did the social worker say could you trust that the social worker would not bring themselves or their recommendation into the health visitors or the schoolnurse or a teacher how how do you know and how how how comfortable do you feel because this is about trying to work in partnership and trying to work as openly and honestly together um and how does thatfeel and a lot of well the people that i've uh have worked with who told me about this experience are very uncomfortable with the the way that um recommendations are being delivered at the moment so we definitely needto think about how that's done and the way that you describe it is is something that i've also heard similar with coherence um as well where all the professionals are together and and the family member is kind of
left out in the cold and that's very difficult because that's how it feels anyway yeah absolutely it's almost like a physical way of demonstrating how it felt anyway so so uh that's enough of a theory really but we've
Annie shares personal stories of being assessed as a child, a parent, and during child protection involvement. She describes confusing questions, pre-birth assessment pressure, and the importance of stories and emotions in understanding assessment.
kind of refreshed the theory but we're gonna go to uh you sharing your experiences now and i know that's why everybody's come tonight so if it's over to you now annie thank you um so i'm just gonna talkyou through some of my experiences i don't intend on talking you through them all because we'll probably be here until about 1 in the am and we've all got beds to go to um but i want to talkto you a little bit about some of my experiences of um of assessment and i have been assessed throughout my life so i was assessed as a child as being at risk and then removed from my home iwas assessed again whilst during my time in the foster care system and constantly assessed there very much um on the outside i felt as a young person now this was the the sort of early 90s so it's slightly
different i would hope anyway in 2020 but that feeling of being on the outside is one that's very very powerful and it does stay with you and then as an adult and being moved into um motherhood um whereyou constantly feel assessed anyway as soon as you fall pregnant you are assessed um by a midwife by a doctor by a health visitor by who down the road who's got something to say and and wants to tellyou how you're ruining your child's life already when your child's the size of a grape and in your uterus so um you are constantly being assessed as a human anyway adding into that um the uh trauma that weor that i have gone through in my childhood and the fact that i would often respond with a trauma response meant that any assessments or any judgments cut me so much deeper um i never had um approval as
a child um and i would seek that from elsewhere i would seek it from friends um from professionals all of the time um to try and and and know or have some sort of reassurance that i was agood person that i was um a decent human being that i was doing things right that i was a good mum um and and it's very difficult when you haven't had that as a child to then feel confidentand bold as as an adult and really what um what i had learned was um was that you you you have to really fight for approval and you have to to learn the language or you have to learnum people what what people like um and then you mold yourself to them so that's what i've learned throughout my life and whether that was with men in relationships with friends which i really struggled to build and maintain
relationships with friends because i didn't have the greatest start um and then moving on to professionals so my involvement with the local authority started really around um and that was at a period of time in my life whenmy mental health was not at its most acute it was at its most acute at that point it did get worse but at 2007 i experienced essentially a breakdown and my relationship with the local authority at that pointwas very much a rescue in relationship so i reached out to them um with they they still wore boots and capes as far as i was concerned because they had rescued me as a child which is a verydangerous dangerous narrative to have but because of that i felt safe enough to reach out for support and they were supportive towards me and they did help um however i was the subject of an assessment back then um
and and what what i was really struck with and this kind of this um intervention and this um period of time when i was involved with the local authority went on fourth but essentially for five years before thingsreally came to a head um so within that time we had so many social workers and so many different assessments but one of the earliest ones that we had was that one of my children had additional needs andactually needed um additional support and services um because of my background um and for whatever reason it was it was thought by the local authority we will do a a family assessment um there was a an issue withone of my children but they felt that actually we'll just assess all of them because you never know you might need some support and i thought okay i'll i'll go with that um i felt a little bit got
at but i thought okay we'll go with it and um a social record never met came into my home um with a clipboard um and a pen and sat on the sofa opposite me firing questions at me umwhich had nothing to do with my child's additional needs and nothing to do with any issues that i was having so i was very confused by these questions they ranged from um how often do you wash your towelsnow i sat back and i thought right there's the one because i don't know the right answer to that question if i say i wash them daily which essentially was pretty much the truth as soon as my kidshad a bath i would tell them down and shove it in the washer and that's what i thought you did i didn't realize that you could you could go more than one day i didn't know that now in
my head i did think that that perhaps sounded excessive for an outsider um so i thought okay i'm not gonna say that and then i thought well hang on if i say what what's the answer if i sayfortnightly that's surely not often enough so i can't say that so shall i plump that in the middle i'll plump her in the middle so all of this is taken part in a split second in my head umand that and and that was followed up with how often do you wash your bed sheets and i thought oh god here we go again um well i can't say daily because that's that is a blatant lie buti used to do them on a saturday and i thought well i don't know if other people do them on saturday because i haven't had a family um i haven't seen adults do this so i don't know if
what i do is normal and what i'm frightened of is that if i give the wrong answer what are the consequences for me and my children and my family does this that mean they're going to come in andwhip my kids away because i wash my towels every day and i wash my vegetables on a saturday is that is that the wrong thing to do i don't know um and we kind of scraped through the assessmentum with some very odd questions that seem to have no bearing on why the social worker was actually there as it happened the assessment was i'll say a positive one but that's only because my child got what theyneeded and the social worker left the rest of us alone had it have been a different outcome i'm not sure i would be saying that that was a positive assessment because to me that was what i wanted help
my child i don't need your help if i if i need your help i'll ask for it but i don't at this stage need your help and i know what i need because i'm the expert in my lifeso um and i know what my children need and what my family needs um and actually talking about towels isn't really very helpful it's a waste of both of our times that really reflects um when we think aboutwhat uh we're thinking about the different models that that's that's the agenda of the organization that's the agenda of the worker that's nothing to do with me that's a tick box that's a box that that social worker hasto take to say that they've asked that question why it needed to be done was it it was ever explained to me of course it wasn't and as i've learned that it wasn't necessary it didn't need to be
that anyway so that was the outcome of that assessment and i really wanted to talk to you as well about another assessment which um was conducted uh in respect of me and that what was in respect of mychild and that was a pre-birth assessment unborn assessment um and what i'd like to share with you is a picture now this picture to me represents um the um the feeling around um a pre-birth assessment many many manythings happened during the previous assessment it was during a time of my life that it was very chaotic i was in the middle of care proceedings in respect of my older children as i alluded to in the beginningbut i was also preparing for the birth of a child who i did not know would come home i knew that he may come home and therefore i had to prepare for him coming home because if i didn't
then that would be used against me within that assessment so i went out and i sold clothes i sold underwear and that's quite a market um but i sold things on ebay in order to get these things formy child and to show the social worker and to show anybody who wanted to come into my living room and have a look that i had made the right preparations for my child i didn't do that because forany other reason then that's what i felt like i had to do i had no idea if this child was coming home and if it was up to me i would have rather waited because that was incredibly painfulto have to look at every single day and actually the outcome that we had as you will know was that my child didn't come home when he was born so i had to walk back into that house at
six days post nail having had my child taken out of my arms and that was the first thing that i saw and that was there to please the social worker and to take a box on a form andit wasn't about me and it wasn't about my child and of course the right thing to do is to make sure that he that he had some other sleep but you know babies have slept in draws before it'snot the end of the world this wasn't about my child this was what it represented so i really wanted to share that with you just start to think about the feelings around assessment because as we've seen within theoryit's a very mechanical approach um and it can feel when we talk about data when we talk about information can we think about stories that these are my stories that this is my life um and this is what
i want to talk to you about and this is what i want to share and how do you as a work create that environment where i feel comfortable enough to tell you a story bernie brown talks about usbeing programmed as humans to tell stories and of course we are we all love to talk about our lives ourselves our experiences and we love to hear about other people's experiences so it's no different and that is agreat tool to use an assessment the use of stories how can you allow this person to tell you a story can you become enthralled in that story can you feel some of the feelings that that that story isbringing up for that person who's selling it can you can you feel the vulnerability that it must take for that person to tell you that story these are the things that are important to us um and these are
the things that when it comes to learning about assessment that are really key so i wanted to share that with you and i wanted you to think a little bit about the feelings and what i want to do
Annie leads an exercise asking participants to imagine revealing a secret, then reflects on how shame, fear, and embarrassment shape responses. The exercise is used to help social workers understand how vulnerable families may feel during assessment.
next um is a little bit of an exercise so you will know that i can't see you however i do have lists of names so what i want to do is just take a moment to do an exercisewith you so i would like you to ignore everything that's going on around you i would like you to close your eyes for a second and just listen to me so i'd like all of you to do itshe's warned you included i am watching your eyes thank you um okay thank you she wants now taking the glasses off to demonstrate her eyes are closed so i need to to close your eyes and i want youto think about your deepest darkest secret something that you don't share and i want you to just feel that secret for a moment and feel what everything that's going on in your body right now just thinking about that
it might be a memory um it might be something that you have concealed from everyone um it might be something that you don't like to talk about might be an opinion that doesn't go down well it might bejust something that's very uncomfortable and i just want you to sit with that for a moment try to sit in the moment with that please
now what i'm going to do i'm going to pick one of you i'm going to read a name out and when i do that i would like that person to share that secret with all of us
so how does that feel think about how that feels right now at any moment i'm going to read your name out if we were in a room together i would be walking amongst you and at any moment iwould be tapping one of you on the shoulder how does that feel somebody's saying terrified sheer panic okay open your eyes i'm not going to pick on any of you partially because i can't actually see the names ilied sorry about that parents lie so i'm not going to do that what i want you to do is immediately think about what would you have done if i'd picked on you would you have told me the truthwould you have not told me the truth this is your first poll i would like you to engage in this poll right now i'll give you a moment to do that so i'm just gonna um talk about the
poll and because not everyone can see the poll and certainly the results so there is a poll up that says would you tell the truth would you make something up or lie or would you refuse to answer andat the moment we've got uh 230 250 uh responses in and at the moment it's sitting at 14 people 14 of the people would tell the truth 42 of people would make something up or lie and 45 ofpeople would refuse to answer so it's still sitting at around about that same number even though we've now got 305 people answered it's around about it stayed pretty consistent at 14 of people would tell the truth 41 wouldmake something up 45 would refuse to answer well isn't that interesting so the second pull beside um if you didn't get a chance to answer that one please do involve yourself in the next one um your second poll
is why why would you so the majority of people and um kudos to those who said they would tell the truth not entirely sure i believe you but i will i will say okay you know i will iwill listen and say that that 14 of people have said they will tell the truth fantastic you should all be politicians um instead of social workers um but for those that said that they would either refuse to answeror they would lie or they would make something up why tell me why was it embarrassment was it fear was it shame it might have been all three but i didn't do an option for that sorry which onewas it what was the most what was the strongest factor for you and so i'll just again explain the poll is we've got at the moment 266 people have answered and 24 of people are saying it was embarrassment
uh 28 of people saying fear and 48 of people saying shame impacted on their answer which is very interesting because annie as you will know the webinar next week is all about the impact of shame in social workand their 49 of people it was shame that was the biggest factor for them yeah and that is i have to say the biggest factor for the majority of us shame is such an excruciatingly painful emotion to feelum and it's something that does not go it stays with you forever you might think that i'm this super confident person because i'm on the screen and i'm able to talk to you about some of my deepest darkersecrets that doesn't mean i don't feel shame it's still there it won't ever go so that's something that that for certainly for next week you can think about more you can talk about more with siobhan next week so
i i'm glad that we did that exercise i'm sorry that it felt so uncomfortable but some of those feelings um it's helpful for us um as family members and for users of services for you to have felt them
Annie uses a treasured cup belonging to her late son to explain trust, care, and the handling of personal information. She shows how assessment depends on whether families believe their stories will be treated respectfully and returned safely.
it's because then you will know how it then feels to have somebody come into your home and expect you to divulge your deepest darkest secret so one thing i want to talk to you briefly about and i'm mindfulof time but one thing i do want to talk to you about which is very very important to me um whether you saw our tweets earlier and not about what a towel's got to do with assessment well we'veanswered that what is the the number three got to do with assessment and then what cups got to do with assessment so i want to introduce um an an object to you and i know that you've if you'vebeen with the webinars before you have done uh objects in social work well this is an object in my life that's very important and uh and i had to go off camera before because i actually forgot to bring
it into the room so i apologize for that but this is a very very very special cup so i'm hoping that you can all see it if you can't see it this is a black um cup with abatman logo on it it's got a broken handle which has been fixed this is a very very important cup to me this sits on my desk above my computer and i look at it every single day there hasnot been a day gone by that i haven't looked at this cup for a long long time and the reason for that is that this belongs to my late son johnny um he died he left us just overthree years ago and i miss him every single day he was my best friend and my biggest supporter i had him when i was 16 and i will never not go an hour i think without being able without
thinking about him so i miss him huge huge amounts that's him um behind us that you can see and a lot of this is is his uh his belongings here but this is a particularly special item now iknow shivon pretty well in fact siobhan came to my son's funeral that's how well i know siobhan we've been friends for a long time and i trust siobhan so if i was to give siobhan this cup i wouldknow that if shivan needed to take this cup anywhere first of all if i handed her this cup i know that shivon would treat it with with reference um she would treat it carefully she would be very veryum gentle with a cup she would certainly not fling it about the countryside but also she needed to take the cup somewhere i would know that siobhan would wrap this in bubba wrap she would pops put it in
a box and she she would be likely to put it very carefully in her car she would probably let me know when the cup had arrived at its destination and she would probably if she needed to bring thecup back which one hoped she would then she would let me know when it was on its way back and then of course hand it very carefully back to me when she arrived back at my home now iwould give siobhan that cup because i trust siobhan i know her very well and i know that she would look after this now i don't know omar um i know him from twitter and i've met him this eveningin person and it's a great pleasure to meet you all more um are you angel fan club um but i don't know our mom um and i would not give her more this cup um i would not know
what he would do with it i don't know how he would treat this cup um or whether we would look after it um what he would do with it who we would give it to would it be passedaround the office i don't know um i'm not sure would it come back in this state i don't know i don't know omar i'm sure he's a lovely person i'm absolutely positive he's a lovely guy but i don'tknow him so why on earth would i give him this cup now i want you to think about this cup as my information so when you're trying to extract data or information from a family member if you canthink about this cup what are the what are the variables in me giving you that information i don't know you i don't trust you we've not necessarily i've built a very short relationship with omar um but i don't
i don't i haven't built a relationship in in the way that i have with siobhan that hasn't been time so if omar was coming in to do an assessment or to take this cup from me i would reallystruggle with that so as you as social workers how do you create that environment really quite quickly where we know that this cook would be looked after how would you do that so these are the things to thinkabout of course it's important to think about the theory of course it's important to think about what you need to get done in your assessment but what's also important for us is what you do with my information wheredoes it go who's going to look at it who's going to talk about it is anybody anybody going to laugh is anybody going to judge or or say oh well isn't she strange having a dead son's cup next
to her isn't she strange for having this aspect of her personality oh she's got this aspect of her personality she must be xyz that's how it feels for us to give you information we have to trust you andwe have to know what you're going to do with it and actually when you've got that information we need to know where it goes we need to know that you're going to be careful with it and you're goingto look after it and that actually you're going to bring it back to us so when you conduct an assessment it's not just about the the beginning of the assessment and the ex the building of the relationship andthe extracting of data it's also about what happens next and how you then get from here to here how you get from building a relationship to delivering a recommendation how you get to coming into my home and getting
me in a position where i trust you enough to give you my cup to then given me that cut back with a few recommendations around that cup how do you do that so that's the sort of thing thati want you to think about when it comes to assessment when it comes to working with people this is really precious to me but equally my information my stories are really precious to me too so i'm gonna go
Annie offers practical advice on entering homes, accepting tea, acknowledging power, choosing language carefully, and sharing notes. She stresses the importance of relationships, awareness of trauma, clear communication, and human kindness throughout the assessment process.
on to some do's and don'ts and and this is essentially a list which i'm sure will go out to you and tomorrow in your email so i'll talk very very quickly around the list um first of all doconsider how you how you enter our homes that's not about you know do you take shoes off although that's really important some people um particularly culturally will will expect or want you to take shoes off so make sureyou've not got a monkey pair of socks on that have got a hole in um but consider how you and enter our homes how would you enter the home of somebody you didn't know or you you would youdidn't have a relationship with you would ask where to sit you would let them lead you all of these things show us that we have the power in our own home you're coming onto our turf and you need
to respect that it's really very important to us check where to sit ask if it's okay to get your laptop out if that's what you're doing um comment on the home comment how pretty it is or this isa particularly nice picture on the wall that's lovely consider how you enter our homes how do you come into our lives don't refuse a cup of tea so this is a very key one with families with adults usingservices actually with children too if they're old enough to meet your cup of tea drink it um but actually even if you don't want a cup of tea the cup of tea isn't a cup of tea to usit's quite symbolic because i have made social workers cup of tea cups of tea where it has been my last teabag and that isn't a lie um designed to fit in with this um workshop that is the absolute
truth i've tried to impress somebody by giving them my last tea bag and i've never said a word and they'll never know and if they're watching they won't know it's them don't refuse that cup of tea because thatmight be our last one and also it shows us that you're willing to come into our world um if you don't want to drink the tea that's fine you can leave it on the side and you can sayoh do me i forgot about my tea that's perfectly fine you don't necessarily have to drink the tea just don't refuse it it's respectful so acknowledge the power dynamic do acknowledge the power dynamic that's a really important oneum we do have power there is a power mismatch there's no point in trying to deny it it's very important that it does not become the elephant in the room it's very important that we acknowledge that it's there
the parent or family member or adult might be very concerned about what you do with your power and how you wield that power as a parent as a mom i was always very scared that whatever i said wasgoing to be used against me and they would come and take my kids away because i knew that they had the power to do that social workers have got the power to remove my children granted they've got togo through court or the police but actually the media doesn't show me that bit the media and coronation street or eastenders or you know the daily fail um sorry the daily mail they don't show me that process whatthey show me is evil social worker coming into my home to take my child so you are already pushing water uphill and in terms of what i might know about the social worker and their power so you have
to acknowledge the power dynamic you have to say that it's there if the parent is really worried about oh god you know i you remove my kids address it there's nothing to be gained from pretending it's not happeningit's it's okay to say okay tell me what is what is it that's worrying you right let's work that through i can't come in here today and remove your kids that ain't gonna happen first of all i don'twant to do that that's not why i'm here but secondly there's a whole process that we need to go through and we are not there yet so that's a way a very easy simple way of trying to toreassure a parent that's or a family member that you're not there to do that don't expect too much too soon so we've talked about the cup please don't come into our living rooms and think that we're immediately going
to tell you our deepest talk a secret because we're not going to you'll need to put the work in you'll need to put some of the the foundations of our relationship in first choose your language carefully this hasbeen brought up in the chat already um it's something that's a huge bug bear of mine um please be careful about the language that you use think about it beforehand um does this sound right if i talk aboutoutcomes or do i talk about what i want what i want for this family what do i what about what would i love to see you do mrs smith what would i love for you to achieve mr smithlet me help you do that choose your language carefully please don't take notes without sharing them with us i have been in many meetings um many conferences and have been assessed where the notes that appeared afterwards via post
had no no reflection on what actually my experience of that meeting was so make sure if you are taking notes you just check with a parent and if you need to do that virtually right now you can dothat visually just share with the parent are you okay with this is this an accurate reflection of what we've just talked about would you want to change anything do you want to just sign to say that you've seenthem and you're happy with them be aware of the relationships that we have with other people um in some of my darkest times i had very poor relationships with the social workers however i had strong relationships with peoplelike my midwife um i had six children so i was a repeat customer clearly she knew me well but i had a very strong relationship with her i had a good relationship with health visitor um i had a
great relationship in my children's school these were people that actually can be useful um in terms of the assessment process you don't always have to do a one-on-one could you think about oh well actually mr smith has areally good relationship with the head teacher at the school let's see if the head teacher's free yes spoiler the head cheater was unlikely to be free similar story with the gp but still you can find another professional orsomebody um it doesn't have to be a professional um it can be mum and a neighbor across the road treasure up the street it can be somebody that we feel very safe with um that's able to uh tohelp the situation so be aware of that what could help your assessment what could what could be useful to you don't um dismiss the impact of our past experiences now that can be past experiences with a local authority
or it could actually be our trauma that we've suffered as children um or as young adults please don't dismiss that we will sometimes respond in ways that are confusing or or that you perhaps don't understand that doesn't meanthey're wrong it's just the ways that we respond so it's about learning about us as humans and learning what what is what are the triggers what are the right ways to talk to us and you do have toto learn that you know when you get when you get a pet or when you you bring a baby home you don't instantly know who that person is you've got to put the leg work in and get toknow okay the baby likes to be held this way or the cat likes to be fed my cat likes to be fed in the dining room by itself you know um he's such a fart but he is but
i had to learn that it took me a while to learn that so don't dismiss the impact of our past experiences please remember that we don't know what comes next we've never been in a social work um degreecourse we've never listened to social workers alone so we don't know how long it takes to do an assessment we don't know what what the paper trail is we don't know who you're going to talk to next thoseare things that actually if we go back to the cup that are really important to us what's the trail um equally think about the when when you think about delivering the decisions or recommendations give us an idea ofwhen that's going to be okay so i'm going to um i'm going to finish my assessment on this date and then on this date i'm going to put it through your door you can read it when you're ready
or we can go through it together and and that's up to you i'm touched on the last one there by creating a safe environment to receive your recommendations don't ask us a question about towels unless you absolutely haveto don't ask us a needless question um maybe choose be discerning do you need to know this is it going to help your assessment or is it just stuck there because it benefits the organization do you really haveto ask this is it actually going to drive a wedge between you and this person maybe don't ask it then or maybe ask it in a different way um keep us in the loop at all times that goesback to communication drop us a text drop us an email keep talking to us we need to know this might be one of 20 assessments that you've got on the go to us it's one assessment it's our life
it's our story don't ignore the power of shame we've touched on that and that will come more next week you will talk about that more next week with siobhan um you felt it yourself um with that exercise thatwe did together it's a very very um debilitating and excruciating pain don't ignore that it's really tough there's nothing tougher than having a social worker knock on your door and knowing that your neighbor's curtains are twitching it's reallytough so it's not the ideal environment to then conduct an assessment so just be aware of that you've got lanyards put them away don't need to be on display you don't need to to have a big flashing neonbadge saying social worker we're humans so create a safe environment um for us to receive your recommendations always touch on that already um think about the before and think about the durian and think about the afterwards who have
we got around us afterwards to look after us because that's really important especially if the news isn't good we do need to be supported and even if you are the person that is recommending that the newborn baby isremoved this woman at eight and a half months pregnant needs to know that you still care and needs to hear that you're still on the end of the phone even if i hate you i still need to knowyou're at the end of the phone and you've not given up on me that's really important and don't forget that this will stay with us forever i will never forget pretty much all of the interactions that i've hadwith social workers over the years and there have been hundreds i don't forget the social workers names i don't forget the amount of social workers we've had and i don't forget the interactions that were good and the interactions
that were not so good shall we say these things stay with me forever the last one um is all about the core of me and the core of you and that's don't forget your human kindness and put thatabsolutely at the top of your list everything that we do should be with kindness this is a tough old world that we live in and it costs absolutely nothing to be kind even if you are having to dealwith the worst and most awful decisions and the most difficult awful assessments um where children are in real danger and parents have very little insight you can still be kind you can still deal with that there is morethan one way to remove a baby and i think that that's the sort of thing that that should just just be at your court be in your gut at all times so that's it from me i'm gonna let
Siobhan summarizes the main themes: relationship-building, gathering information, and making recommendations, along with triangulation and the many triangles in social work. She invites reflection on three takeaways and previews upcoming webinars on shame and migrant children.
siobhan um close us up for the evening thank you for listening to me thank you so much for sharing with us annie i know how much people are learning from you i mean i can't see the chat buti'm sure that people are saying in the chat all of the things that they're learning so thank you so much and for sharing with us um so tonight uh we asked you on social media before we came inwe asked you what does a cup have to do with the session what do towels have to do with assessment and what's the three and it's really i suppose the magic three so for us it's about three stagesof assessment build the relationship then gather your information and then make you reach your decision or your recommendation we looked at three models of assessment that are very traditional been around for a long time and there's also three
sources of evidence really in triangulation and then that takes us on to all the other triangles that get used in assessment in social work so uh i suppose it's uh three is the magic number really for tonight andso what we're going to ask you to do um because in other webinars we've been encouraging the three stages of reflection haven't we and those stages of reflection are reflection before during and after so having listened to thepower of annie's story i want you all to think about three learning points from tonight that you can take away into your own practice so if we were to ask you what three things would you identify from tonightthat you can take forward into your practice and feel free to put those into the chat to share those with each other if you've already got them in mind and if not go off and write those if you've
got a reflective journal go and write a reflective account about tonight's webinar and what three things can you take from tonight as if you like learning points that you take away we said earlier and we had this imageearlier that sometimes assessment feels very scientific it feels very dehumanized it's all about goals and outcomes and evaluate and analyze and measuring things and planning and research and it's all about that but actually what's behind all of thatthe three things for me are relationships relationships and relationships and three of us together in a relationship annie and myself and yusuf who joined us in a previous webinar about analysis worked on this book together and working towardsaccreditation putting the pieces together it's a workbook for children and families social workers we've talked about it before i know that you've probably um seen when we've talked about this before um but the three of us worked on
it together and if you've liked annie's do's and don'ts tonight then each chapter pretty much in that book and you can see the list of chapters there has annie's advice and it also has paul's perspective so we havethat throughout the book and you don't need to believe me you can take it from uh tweets around uh how good this book is in terms of bringing together those relationships so uh yusuf having experienced care and anniesharing her um thoughts and her advice for social workers and i think i think it's probably going into the chat now but this is on a special offer and because three is the magic number i'm gonna put iton to a special offer for three weeks i think and uh so the uh references that you might need are there we will as you know if you attend regularly you will get an email tomorrow that has all
of the follow-up information and resources and i hope you've enjoyed tonight as much as i have i'm always fascinated by how annie can talk to us in ways that are so helpful to think about what we can learnand and and i know everybody's learned from it but it does lead us really nicely into next week's webinar which is all about shame we're going to look at the theory base of that but we're going to haveanother spotlight next week spotlight guest exploring the impact of shame and i think it's an issue that is too often ignored in social work and the following week because i know lots of you like to know what's comingnext we're going to be looking at working with migrant children which is such an important topic at the moment and as i know everybody will be conscious and we're trying to address contemporary issues but also issues of theory
The hosts thank Mary for her contribution to the team and hand over to Annie for a final message. Annie closes by encouraging students and practitioners to keep going, make a difference, and continue supporting children and families.
and reflection in our series of webinars i do just want to also tonight say thank you very much to mary who has been a core member of our social work student connect team from the very beginning and maryis now in uh i suppose the full throes of employment now mary having graduated aren't you and so tonight is going to be the last webinar where mary is going to be uh live on the panel just becauseof getting home in time from work and things i think mary but she's still going to be very much there and around uh kind of supporting the social connect student connect team because i know um how important thatis to all of us so just as a formal thank you to mary before she uh sort of ceases attending every week just so that all the audience out there know that you may not see um mary on
the panel again so thank you very much to mary and i'm gonna uh i'm gonna end things there but i'm just gonna hand over the final word to annie i don't know if you want to give us thequotation that you know i am always quoting you on annie but you can say anything you want you're in charge of concluding tonight's webinar you know what i don't actually know what that quotation is you'll have to
yeah that's very true yes there is noise in them so there is no menu there should only be we are we that's always been my favorite quote um and i i use it frequently although clearly not frequently enoughbecause i've just forgotten it um but i do use it frequently i think the last thing i'd like to say um is thank you um for choosing this path um which is not an easy one and it's it'suh it's a difficult profession to get into um and it's a difficult question for the profession to stay in so thank you actually for doing what you're doing because you do make a massive difference to the lives ofchildren to the lives of families to the lives of all of us that use services you do make a difference you can be that one person that believes in your the child the family member the adult who uses
services you can be that one person that that might you we might never have had anyone believe in you before i know i never did but you can make a difference you can be the change so thank youfor all you do keep doing it i wish you all the best of luck in your careers as students and for those of you that are already experienced practitioners keep doing what you're doing thank you very much forlistening to me tonight and i wish you all the best goodnight
everyone